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Monthly Archives: June 2018

Connectivity between SAP Cloud Platform and an on premise SAP NetWeaver system is normally achieved via SAP Cloud Connector. A nice feature depending on this is the remote connection of SAP Web IDE to an on premise ABAP system. The feature allows to easily load apps from the ABAP system and change or extend them from everywhere.

For this feature to work, some ICF services must be active on the ABAP system and remote access enabled on SCC. If not, Web IDE cannot “talk” to NW ABAP. Some possible errors and solutions regarding the setup are shown in this blog.

Scenario

A NetWeaver ABAP system with Fiori apps is available and the SAP Cloud Connector is configured to expose the system to SAP Cloud. I am using the SAP NetWeaver ABAP 7.51 Developer Edition for the scenario.

In the destination section of SCP, the SCC is shown as connected and the destination NPL is configured and working. A connection tests gives back a successful message: SCP <–> SCC <–> NW works.

Problem

A developer tries to extend a Fiori app. In Web IDE, the project wizard for an extension project is used.

After selecting the on premise system destination, an error message is displayed. The actual error message can differ. Sometimes you see an informative error message or just some red text or maybe nothing.

Error messages

In all cases, you can check the log of SCC and see a detailed information on the error.

The error message is:

Access denied to /sap/bc/adt/discovery for virtual host npl:443

Solution

The ICF service /sap/bc/adt/discovery is not accessible. This can be because the user does not have the right permissions, or the service is not active in the NW system, or SCC is not exposing the service.

Alternative A: SCC not exposing service

Adding a service in SCC will only expose the exact path, not the sub path. Either you add all paths exactly in the resource list, or change the access policy to accept sub-paths too.

Root cause: Path only, excluding sub-paths.

Solution: Change this to will allow Web IDE to access the resource.

Alternative B: ICF service not active

In the NW ABAP system, got to transaction SICF and check node /sap/bc/adt. This node must be activated. By default, this node is deactivated and must be activated by Basis.

Root cause: Service deactivated

Solution: Activate node adt. Right click and select Activate Service.

Alternative C: Missing authorization

Check with SU53 and SAP Help what is missing and assign the right permissions to your user.

Result

After applying the correct solution, the developer can use the extension project wizard in SAP Web IDE to load available applications.

When running a CI job you may need to use some SAP tools. For instance, the MTA builder or Neo tools. Many CI servers include integration to build tools or plugins are provided by the community or vender. Jenkins offers plugins for Maven, Ant or Node that let you easily integrate these into a CI jobs. If you have a CI job for SAP, it is your task to make the necessary tools available. There are not many plugins for SAP available for Jenkins.

Some tools you may need can be found on SAP’s tool site. For instance, the MTA builder. A simple JAR file that is available for download and needed in case you are working with MTA apps.

Solution

Running the above wget command will not download the tool, but a web site. Some may know that this is very close to how Oracle protected it’s Java download. And the “solution” here is the same: send the right cookie via wget.

I have a git repository on SCP that I want to clone using git on my laptop. I thought this should be easy to do. The source code of my project is available in the git repo at SCP. Cloning the repo using git clone from this URL should work.

I did a), and b) did not apply, as I wasn’t asked for my SCN user ID nor password. SAP’s git troubleshooting guide contains a section about the error message. Good to know that there is a possible solution, but I already did already what the proposed solution to the error is:

„Ensure that you have the correct repository URL. Copy it from the Source Location section of the repository’s details page in the SAP Cloud Platform cockpit.“

As it is possible to access the repository in SAP Web IDE, it should also be possible to access it from outside SCP. I know that the git repository is protected. Maybe the requests from git cli is blocked by SCP? After all, I was not asked to authenticate. Maybe I can force SCP to ask me for my password? Changing the URL to include my SCN user ID did just that: I was asked to provide my password.

SCP is now asking for my password and – magic happening – the git service is now accessible and the repo can be cloned. Would be nice if the git service would ask me to authenticate instead of failing directly.